SADDAM HUSSEIN EXECUTED

Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi president, has been hanged, Iraqi officials
have said.

The execution took place shortly before 6am (03:00 GMT) on Saturday at an Iraqi
military facility in northern Baghdad.

Iraqi television later showed footage of Saddam being placed in a noose by
hangmen, cutting away just before his execution.

The 69-year-old appeared calm, chatting to his hangmen as they wrapped his
neck in black cloth and steered him towards the gallows.

Iraqi television later showed footage of his body.

Saddam was convicted last month of the killings of 148 Shias after a failed
assassination attempt in 1982.

After the execution, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, urged Saddam's
fellow Baathists to reconsider their tactics and join the political process.

"I urged followers of the ousted regime to reconsider their stance as the door
is still open to anyone who has no innocent blood on his hands, to help in
rebuilding an Iraq for all Iraqis," he said.

In Sadr City, a Shia area of Baghdad, people danced in the streets while others
fired guns in the air to celebrate the former leader's death.

Kurds also welcomed the hanging and the office of the Kurdish regional
president, Massud Barzani, issued a statement saying: "We hope that Saddam
Hussein's execution will open a new chapter among Iraqis and the end of using
violence against civilians."

Violence in Iraq continued on Saturday after Saddam's death and at least 30
people were killed when a bomb exploded in a fish market south of Baghdad in the
first.

US satisfaction

George Bush said that the execution was an important milestone on the country's
path to democracy.

"Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq, but it is
an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern,
sustain, and defend itself," the US president said in a statement.

An appeals court had upheld the death penalty on Tuesday and the Iraqi
government rushed through the procedures to hang Saddam by the end of the year
and before the Eid al-Adha holiday that starts on Saturday.

Saddam's half-brother, Barzan al-Tikriti, and a former judge, Awad al-Bander,
also sentenced to death for their roles in the killings of the villagers in
Dujail, will be hanged after Eid, officials said on Saturday.

Hanging footage

The execution took place at an Iraqi army base in Kadhimiya. The base was the
former headquarters for Saddam's military intelligence where many of his victims
were tortured and executed in the same gallows.

The northern Baghdad district is also home to one of Shia Islam's holiest
shrines.

The government had kept details of the execution plan secret amid concerns that
it may provoke a violent backlash from Saddam's supporters with Iraq on the
brink of civil war.

"It was very quick. He died right away," an official Iraqi witnesses told the
Reuters news agency.

Sami al-Askari, a political ally of al-Maliki, said: "We heard his neck snap."

Another witness said: "He seemed very calm. He did not tremble."

As guards took him to the scaffold, according to witnesses, Saddam said: "There
is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet."

Criticism

During his three decades in power, Saddam was accused of widespread oppression
of political opponents and genocide against Kurds in northern Iraq. His
execution means that he will never face justice on those charges.

Others have questioned the timing of the killing, coming at the beginning of the
Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

Saddam insisted during his trial that he was still the president of Iraq. He
said in a letter written after his conviction that he offered himself as a
"sacrifice".

"If my soul goes down this path [of martyrdom] it will face God in serenity," he
wrote in the letter.

'Biased' trial

Saddam's defence team and human rights groups complained that the former Iraqi
leader had not recieved a fair trial.

Najeeb Al-Nuaimi, one of the defence lawyers, told Al Jazeera: "There was bias,
the prosecution sided with their politicians, it was an ethnically established
court with three Shia and one Sunni."